Ethics

Silver on the Bradley Effect

By Ed Brayton

Nate Silver has an article in Newsweek arguing that the much-discussed Bradley effect will not hurt Obama in this election. First, he explains what it is and how it got the name:

The Bradley effect is named after Tom Bradley, the former Los Angeles mayor who, in 1982, narrowly lost a bid to become California's governor after having led substantially in the polls. The same pattern reflected itself in other instances involving African-American candidates: Douglas Wilder underperformed his polling in 1989 (but still narrowly won the Virginia governor's race), as did David Dinkins in the New York mayoral race that same year. The theory goes that, in these races, white voters wanted to appear politically correct by telling pollsters they were going to vote for a black candidate when, in fact, they were not prepared to do so.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).